popping bubbles since 2012

Winning is not everything

One team you can count out of next year’s March Madness: Uconn. Surprised? The University of Connecticut men’s basketball team cannot compete for the national championship next year after the NCAA firmly denied the school’s appeal. The academic performance of the athletes’ has been subpar according to NCAA standards. They use a metric called academic performance rate (APR) which indicates the success of collegiate teams moving their athletes towards graduation. A perfect score is 1000, and 925 indicates 50% graduation rate. University of Connecticut men’s basketball team scored an 893 during the 2009-2010 academic year. The university argues that the team that won the national championship last year had a ‘near perfect 978’. Players on the current squad will be penalized for actions they had nothing to do with. In addition, they must remove two scholarships.

As NCAA sanctions become more stringent, we as fans can see our favorite teams get penalized for decisions that happened several seasons ago. The ongoing effort to make the actions of NCAA teams more transparent has lead to many consequences. Recent examples include sanctions at University of Southern California, Ohio State, and now University of Connecticut.

Should current players on penalized teams be condemned for things they did not do? What did they do to deserve this? Do you agree with these educational standards placed on schools by the NCAA?

Think about current players at the above mentioned schools or even young New Orleans Saints players who will be affected by their coaches’ suspensions this upcoming season

Is there a better solution to this problem? Who should actually be punished?